LCCC ENGLISH
DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
April 16/2007
Bible Reading
of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 20,19-31. On the evening of
that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples
were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to
them, "Peace be with you."When he had said this, he showed them his hands and
his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. (Jesus) said to them
again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when
he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy
Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are
retained."Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when
Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he
said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger
into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." Now a
week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came,
although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be
with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and
bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but
believe." Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"Jesus said to
him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who
have not seen and have believed."Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence
of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.But these are written that
you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that
through this belief you may have life in his name.
Latest News Reports
From miscellaneous sources for April 16/07
Clinton says Syria & Israel could resolve conflict in 35
minutes-Ya Libnan
Lebanese
Judiciary Uncovers Corruption Scandal-Naharnet
U.S. Committed to Court, Worried About
Lack of Christian Unity-Naharnet
UN's 30-year quest for Lebanon peace-BBC
News
Syria rejects businessman's comments to
Israeli lawmakers.International
Herald Tribune
UK reporters union to boycott Israel-Jerusalem
Post
Syria refutes Israel talks claims-PRESS
TV
UAE demining effort in Lebanon hailed-Khaleej
Times
Secular Turks March Against Erdogan's
Islamist Presidency-Naharnet
Lebanon: The ball is now in the UN's court to rescue the
tribunal-Ya Libnan
Lebanon’s opposition upside down Logic-Ya Libnan
Bush to pay first visit
to Pope Benedict in June-AP
Bush to
pay first visit to Pope in June Sat Apr 14,
ROME (Reuters) - U.S.
President George W. Bush will pay his first visit to Pope Benedict in June, the
Vatican said on Saturday.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Bush will meet the Pope on June 9 or 10
after attending a Group of Eight summit in Germany.
Benedict, who was elected pope two years ago after the death of John Paul II,
last week lamented the "continual slaughter" in Iraq. "Nothing positive comes
from Iraq," he said in his Easter message. A government source said on Thursday
Bush may also see Prime Minister Romano Prodi during his trip to Rome.Relations
between the two countries have been strained since Prodi took office a year ago,
replacing centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally.
Judiciary Uncovers Corruption Scandal
A corruption scandal in the legal system – the base for desperately needed
reforms after the decades' long status quo in Lebanon - has been uncovered.
Well-informed sources said the Lebanese judiciary has laid its hands on a
"network" during written exams to select Notary Publics to fill the vacancies
across Lebanon.
They said the mastermind of the network, which is backed by political as well as
factional sides, operates from Beirut's southern suburb of Haret Horeik.
Based on testimonies obtained from some of those in custody, the sources said
the network used its expertise in logistics and wireless communication by means
of linking a number of candidates with receivers connected to the "mastermind"
who was taking charge of answering test questions.
The sources said the cheating was detected when one proctor suspected an
examinee repeatedly touching his ear.
After he was sent out of the exam hall and examined, inspectors found hidden
wires attached all over his body as well as a sophisticated button-like
receiver.
Soon afterwards, similar wires and receivers were found discarded in the
lavatory.
Among those detained were Hassan Beshara, Philip Khoury, Bilal Khalil, Fouad
Fakih, Fadi Shour and Ali Zaarour.
The sources said instructions were given to arrest two runaways --Levon Serajian
and Ali Doulani.
Justice Minister Charles Rizk swiftly cancelled the exams, saying a new test
date will be set later.
A statement issued by the bar association urged the judiciary to uncover all
"the doers and collaborators ... in the cheating operation." Beirut, 15 Apr 07,
08:09
U.S. Committed to Court, Worried About Lack of Christian Unity
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch has said
his government is committed to the formation of the international tribunal that
would try suspects in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's murder and related crimes. Welch
told An Nahar daily's Washington correspondent that if the Lebanese parliament
does not ratify the tribunal, the U.S. will consider with other members of the
U.N. Security Council legal options to set up the court.
He blamed "foreign interference" for obstructing the formation of the
international tribunal. Speaker Nabih Berri, whose Amal movement is part of the
Hizbullah-led opposition, is refusing to call for a parliament session to set up
the court. Welch said that he discussed with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir
in a telephone conversation Wednesday discord among Christians in Lebanon. "I
expressed my concern over lack of unity" between them, Welch added.
He also said that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Damascus has not
led to changes in Syria's behavior in Lebanon.
Pelosi's trip last week stirred controversy, with President George Bush and
other administration officials lashing out at the speaker for undermining the
government's tough line against the Syrian regime, which the U.S. accuses of
supporting terrorism. Beirut, 13 Apr 07, 10:32
UN's 30-year quest for
Lebanon peace
By Paul Adams
BBC News, Lebanon
In the volatile border zone in southern Lebanon, sandwiched between Israel and
Hezbollah, UN troops are continuing their perilous work to build peace.
Many towns in southern Lebanon were left in ruins last summer Unifil is the UN's
interim force in Lebanon. Ironic, when you bear in mind that it has been there
for almost 30 years. In the Middle East, very little is ever interim. The
problems have a way of persisting. Qana is a town of memorials. The largest, a
collection of tomb-like slabs, marks the spot where more than 100 civilians were
killed by Israeli shell fire 11 years ago. But next to it stands a monument to
dozens of Fijian peacekeepers killed on Unifil duty. It is not the only cenotaph
of its kind in southern Lebanon. More than 250 UN peacekeepers have died since
1978. It is humbling to be reminded that soldiers have come here from all
corners of the globe in a prolonged attempt to bring order to southern Lebanon.
When I accompanied a patrol close to the Israeli border, I learned that Ghana
was among the first countries to send troops and that practically everyone in
the Ghanaian army has served in Lebanon at one time or another. And what for?
How has this interim force actually improved the lives of the Lebanese? When you
survey the wreckage of past wars, you do find yourself wondering why these
dedicated men and women came here, why they laid down their lives. Sometimes, it
seems to be Unifil's unfortunate fate merely to be stuck in the middle, unable
to stop the periodic upheavals that have punctuated life here.
The UN's observation post has
been partially demolished in Khiam
Nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than at Khiam, over to the east.
Four unarmed observers - from Finland, Canada, Austria and China - were killed
when the UN's observation post was bombed to smithereens by Israel at the height
of last summer's fighting. Israel apologised, saying it was a mistake, but eight
months on, UN personnel barely conceal their contempt.
Our obliging Italian helicopter pilot made several passes for us. As we circled
low, I saw where a section of the outposts' concrete blast walls, whitewashed in
typical UN style, stood partially demolished: the U of United still upright, the
N of nations lying on its side. A few days later, we drove to the site. Personal
effects lie scattered in the wreckage which, for some reason, has yet to be
cleared away. A book about Helsinki's cultural attractions, a box of Chinese
tea, a novel in German.
Broken fragments of the UN's blue and white logo have been propped up by the
front gate.
The whole devastated, eerie site stands as an eloquent symbol of the
international community's frequent impotence in the face of conflict. Getting on
with the job The UN is acutely aware of its reputation and knows that should
Israel and Hezbollah decide to go at it again, there is little Unifil will be
able to do to stop them. But for the moment, despite the oft-heard sentiment
that war is bound to break out again this summer, this seems a remote prospect.
Neither side has the appetite for a fight, at least for now.
Fragments of the UN's blue and white logo lie by the front gate And so Unifil
gets on with its job - reinstalling markers along the so-called Blue Line,
indicating the approximate position of the Israeli-Lebanese border, getting rid
of unexploded weaponry, helping, through what the military like to call "quick
impact projects", to repair bits of Lebanon's infrastructure, and patrolling,
lots and lots of patrolling. In the warm spring sunshine, carpets of flowers
waving in the breeze on the rocky slopes, the pungent smell of orange blossom
overpowering among the citrus groves, it all seems idyllic enough. And, for the
most part, all is quiet.
But in towns which still bear the scars of last summer's fighting, there are
sullen, cold looks from young men, Hezbollah fighters - or at least supporters -
who resent the fact that for the first time in years, the organisation is having
to keep the lowest of low profiles, a result of August's UN resolution and the
subsequent ceasefire.
Syria rejects businessman's
comments to Israeli lawmakers that Assad ready for peace
The Associated PressPublished: April 14, 2007
DAMASCUS, Syria: Syria on Saturday rejected comments made by a Syrian-American
businessman who recently told Israeli lawmakers that President Bashar Assad was
ready to make peace with the Jewish state.Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told
state television that businessman Ibrahim Suleiman's comments "express his
personal point of view, and Syria has nothing to do with this visit or
statements."In an unprecedented appearance before an Israeli parliamentary panel
on Thursday, Suleiman, a Syrian-born American, said he had high-level contacts
with officials in Damascus. Although he said he did not speak for the Syrian
government, he predicted that Israel and Syria could strike a peace deal within
six months if they were to resume talks."Syria right now is ready to speak
peace. I challenged the Israeli government to answer President Bashar's call for
peace and sit down together," Suleiman said.Bilal said Syria is keen to reach a
peace settlement, but according to U.N. Security Council resolutions and the
Arab peace initiative — which call for Israel to withdraw completely from
territory occupied in the 1967 and 1973 wars.
Today in Africa & Middle East
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Bombings kill 37 in Baghdad; 2 UK helicopters crash, killing 2
Militia talks could reshape Darfur violence "There are a lot of Syrians living
in the West who visit their home country, and many offer to help out in the
peace process, and do similar to what Suleiman did," Bilal said.The official
Syrian Arab News Agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying
that Syria has "stressed repeatedly its rejection of any secret talks or through
unofficial channels."Earlier this year, it emerged that Suleiman held several
rounds of secret, unofficial talks with former Israeli Foreign Ministry
Director-General Alon Liel, with the knowledge of leaders in the two
countries.Following Suleiman's appearance, the government of Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert gave no indication it was ready to restart peace talks with
Syria — broken off in 2000.
Assad has repeatedly said he is interested in restarting negotiations, but
Olmert has insisted that Assad end his support for militant groups before talks
can resume.
Israel has used informal contacts in the past, including the talks that led to
the 1993 Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. Those talks
began as meetings between academics and unofficial representatives of the two
sides.
UK reporters union to boycott Israel
By GEORGE CONGER, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
LONDON
Britain's National Union of Journalists denounced Israel on Friday for its
"military adventures" in Gaza and Lebanon, called on the government to impose
sanctions and urged a boycott of Israeli goods. By a vote of 66 to 54, the
annual delegate's meeting of Britain's largest trade union for journalists
called for "a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the
struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions, and [for] the
[Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British
government." Some of the union's 40,000 members decried its "trendy lefty"
agenda. Other motions before the four-day meeting in Birmingham, which ends
Sunday, included condemnations of the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and support for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
Irish artists' call for Israel boycott mocked
The second Lebanon war: JPost.com special report
The boycott motion was the third clause of a larger anti-Israel resolution
proposed by the union's South Yorkshire branch that condemned Israel's "savage,
pre-planned attack on Lebanon" last summer and the "slaughter of civilians in
Gaza" in recent years. Motion 38 also called for supporting the NGOs Jews for
Justice, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and the Council for the Advancement
of British-Arab Understanding. After an hour of debate, a motion to sever the
boycott clause from the condemnation motion was adopted. The motion condemning
Israel's "savage" behavior toward Palestinian civilians in the wake of "the
defeat of its army" by Hizbullah passed by a wide margin. Following two abortive
hand counts, the boycott motion passed by 66 to 54.
The Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent, Toby Harnden, characterized the
vote as "inane, ineffectual, counterproductive and insulting to the
intelligence."
"Why should my dues be spent on anti-Israel posturing of which I and many other
members want no part?" Harnden wrote on his Telegraph blog, condemning the
motion as "tendentious and politically-loaded propaganda that would be rightly
edited out of any news story written in a newspaper that had any pretensions of
fairness." Craig McGinty, a freelance journalist and member of the Union of
Journalists asked on his blog, "How boycotting any nation's goods, whether it's
Israel, China or Umpah Lumpah Land will help improve the lot of both staff and
freelance journalists." Former Guardian reporter and Yahoo Europe news director
Lloyd Shepherd quipped that he now looked "forward to similar boycotts of Saudi
oil (abuse of women and human rights), Turkish desserts (limits to freedom of
speech) and, of course, the immediate replacement of all stationery in the NUJ's
offices which has been made or assembled in China."
On the same day the National Union of Journalists condemned Israel, the
organization's international affiliate, the International Federation of
Journalists, called on the Palestinian Authority to secure the release of BBC
correspondent Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped five weeks ago by Palestinian
gunmen in Gaza.
IFJ general-secretary Aidan White urged the "Palestinian government to do
everything in its power to make sure [Johnston] is released immediately."
The kidnapping had done "great harm not just to journalism but to the
development of the region in general by making it impossible for journalists to
work safely and report on developments there," he said. Johnston's kidnapping
was not on the NUJ's agenda.
Syria refutes Israel talks claims
Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:20:28
Syria has rejected statements by a Syrian-American businessman who said that he
had been at the heart of unofficial peace talks with Israel.
The official Syrian Arab News Agency quoted the Information Minister Mohsen
Bilal as saying on Saturday that Syria opposes any secret talks.
"The statements and the ideas of the American-Syrian Ibrahim Suleiman do not
reflect the point of view of Syria, which has repeated many times its refusal to
undertake secret negotiations," Bilal was quoted as saying. Suleiman on Thursday
told a top Israeli parliamentary panel that Syria and Israel could clinch a
peace deal in six months. "Like everyone else who proposed playing a role in the
peace process, Mr. Suleiman heard Syria's position which rejects secret
negotiations," Bilal said.
Suleiman and Alon Liel, a former Israeli foreign ministry director general, say
they headed two years of the secret talks during which understandings were
reached for a peace treaty between Syria and Israel. Suleiman, 60, was at the
center of the official peace talks between Israel and Syria which began
following the Madrid peace summit, including the 1996 US-sponsored talks at Wye
Plantation and later in 2000 in Shepherdstown. Suleiman said on Thursday that
during those talks, "the sides solved 80 per cent of disagreements." He claimed
that he and Liel had succeeded in further narrowing the gap between the sides,
and that their talks should be replaced by official negotiations.
"Our work is done, now it's up to officials in Israel and Syria to sit down and
iron out their differences," the US businessman said, adding, "We gave them a
peace map." However, the information minister said the Syrian people support
President Bashar Al-Assad's conditions for peace, which include, "the
restoration of the whole occupied Syrian Golan …, the establishment of a
Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital and the recognition of the
Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homeland."
Secular Turks March Against
Erdogan's Islamist Presidency
Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Turkey gathered here Saturday for
a mass rally to discourage Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a conservative
with an Islamist political back ground, from running for the presidency.
Protestors, many of them waving the red and white star and crescent flag of
Turkey and bearing portraits of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern
republic, filled four major arteries for a length of several kilometres (miles)
as they marched on Ankara's sprawling Tandogan Square.
From there, under the discreetly watchful eye of a 10,000-strong police
officers, they headed toward the nearby Mausoleum of Ataturk.
Police estimated the crowd at more than 300,000, while the organizers,
non-government groups led by the Association of Ataturk Thought, said one
million people attended the huge pro-secularism demonstration dubbed "Rally for
the Republic," flooding into the capital in packed buses, trains and planes.
As they poured into the huge courtyard of the Mausoleaum, joining people paying
their respects to the founder of the republic, who died in 1938 after 15 years
as Turkey's first president, the crowd broke into wild applause at the changing
of the guard of honor. "The nation is proud of you," they chanted to the
soldiers, transforming the normally hushed venue into a demonstration ground.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the social-democratic main opposition Republican
People's Party was among the crowd, as was Zeki Sezer, chairman of the
Democratic Left Party.
Hundreds of buses that brought in out-of-town demonstrators -- more than 100,000
of them, according to police -- packed the grounds of the Ataturk Cultural
Center in Ankara, formerly the city's race track. The crowd, chanting "Turkey is
secular, it will remain secular" waved placards reading, "Cankaya (site of the
presidential palace in Ankara) will not be home to (religious) sheikhs and
brotherhoods." Erdogan, who has yet to say whether or not he will run for the
largely symbolic presidency, is widely criticized by Turkey's secular
establishment, including the powerful army, which remains skeptical of his
avowed rejection of his radical Islamist past.
Candidacies for the presidency can be submitted from Monday morning to midnight
on April 25, and many believe Erdogan, who has been canvassing his
parliamentarians and NGOs, will run for the nation's top post. "Legally, he can"
become president, wrote columnist Can Dundar Saturday in the liberal daily
Milliyet. "Politically, he shouldn't. In fact, he will."
"They want to slowly transform Turkey into Iran or Saudi Arabia," retired
teacher Mehlika Erecekler, 44, told AFP, "but they can't because they're afraid
of the army. We support the army." "God preserve us from sharia (Islamic law),"
she said. Another demonstrator, retired government employee Ayda Aysel, 66,
said: "I've seen my share of coups (in Turkey, where the army intervened in
1960, 1971 and 1980) and every coup put Turkey back by 10 years. But if (Erdogan)
becomes president, it will put Turkey back by 100 years." Many oppose the idea
of Erdogan's wife Emine, who always wears the Islamic headscarf hated by most
secularists as a symbol of religion in politics, becoming Turkey's first lady
and one headscarf-wearing demonstrator agreed. Durdu Kuran, a 41-year-old
agricultural worker from the southern town of Finike said: "I don't want Erdogan
to become president because he exploits our religion, he exploits the
headscarf." Turkey's president is elected for a single seven-year term by
parliament, where Erdogan's Justice and Development Party holds a comfortable
majority.(AFP) Beirut, 14 Apr 07, 16:44
Younger Cheney rages against Syria
April 14, 2007 Dawn
Just a week after Vice President Dick Cheney accused Congress’ senior Democrat
and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of “bad behaviour” for
visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his daughter and former senior State
Department official, Elizabeth Cheney, called Thursday for a global diplomatic
embargo against Damascus.
Writing in the Washington Post, the younger Cheney, who served as number two in
the State Department’s bureau of Near Eastern Affairs as recently as ten months
ago, accused Assad’s government of a string of assassinations in Lebanon, adding
that any diplomacy with his regime was “not only irresponsible, it is shameful.”“Talking to the Syrians emboldens and rewards them at the expense of America and
our allies in the Middle East. It hasn’t and won’t change their behaviour. They
are an outlaw regime and should be isolated,” according to Cheney who, while at
the State Department, reportedly worked closely with her father’s office in
promoting Syrian exiles opposed to Assad.
“Members of Congress and State Department officials should stop visiting
Damascus. Arab leaders should stop receiving Bashar al-Assad,” she went on in
what appeared to be a harsh and thinly veiled rebuke of both her former boss,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Abdullah,
who held two private meetings with Assad during last month’s Arab League summit
in Riyadh.
Cheney, who left the State Department on maternity leave in the spring of 2006,
is known to be politically very close to her father and to some of the
neo-conservatives, notably the vice president’s national security adviser, John
Hannah, and senior Middle East aide, David Wurmser, in his office.
That she should issue such a sweeping call for Syria’s diplomatic isolation and
the adoption of both bilateral and multilateral sanctions against Damascus at
this moment evoked considerable speculation here, particularly about the current
power balance between hawks led by the vice president and Deputy National
Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, on the one hand, and “realists” led by the
State Department, on the other, within the administration of President George W.
Bush.
“This could be a desperate attempt to reverse a trend that is going against
them,” said Wayne White, a former top State Department Middle East analyst and
adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute here, noting that the
administration’s policy of isolating Syria has taken a number of serious hits
recently with the visits of both US lawmakers and foreign diplomats.Cheney’s blast, he added, “could not be more ill-timed... To the extent that
Syria is angered by this sort of thing, it could make the situation worse.”
In the last six weeks, Rice has moved -- albeit somewhat tentatively -- to ease
Washington’s unilateral diplomatic embargo against Damascus which it launched in
early 2005 after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik
Hariri, which has been the subject of a UN Security Council investigation whose
results are expected to be made public shortly.
In late February, she explicitly embraced recommendations by the bipartisan Iraq
Study Group (ISG) that Washington sit down with Damascus, as well as Iran, as
part of a series of regional talks on Iraq that began in early March in Baghdad.
She announced at the same time that she would personally take part in the second
round of talks which is currently considered likely to take place in Egypt in
early May.
She also sent her top refugee aide, Ellen Sauerbrey, to Damascus in early March
to discuss with officials there the plight of as many as one million Iraqis who
have sought safe heaven in Syria.
Finally, she offered strong rhetorical support for King Abdullah’s efforts to
re-launch at last month’s Arab League meeting in Riyadh -- the 2002 “Beirut
Declaration” -- a peace plan that offered Israel normalised relations with all
Arab League members, including Syria, in exchange for its return to its 1967
borders. It was at the Riyadh meeting that Abdullah met personally with Assad,
symbolically ending two years of estrangement between the two governments that
began with Hariri’s assassination and worsened during last summer’s war between
Hezbollah and Israel when Assad accused the region’s Sunni leaders of being
“half-men” for attacking the Lebanese group for recklessness.
The Saudis, like State Department “realists” and the ISG’s co-chairmen, former
Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, have
come to believe that wooing Syria, whose isolation has made it increasingly
dependent on Iran, is critical to a larger strategy of containing and rolling
back Tehran’s influence in the region, particularly its influence over both
Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas.
That view is also increasingly accepted in Israel where a growing number of
current and retired senior national security officials have been calling for the
government to accept Assad’s repeated overtures since last fall to resume peace
talks that broke down early 2000.
Indeed, on the same day that Cheney blasted all western and Arab efforts to
engage Damascus, the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee met
with a Syrian-American with close ties to the Assad family and a former senior
Israeli foreign ministry official, Alon Liel, who testified about their secret,
two-year effort to draft a detailed peace plan. “I ask the Israeli government --
I challenge the Israeli government -- to answer President Bashar Assad’s call
for peace,” said the Assad confidant, Ibrahim Suleiman, who predicted that a
final accord for normalisation of ties and the gradual return of the Golan
Heights to Syria could be hashed out within six months.
But such an engagement has been vehemently opposed by Cheney, Abrams, and other
administration hawks, who, despite their diminishing numbers within the
administration since the departure of former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and UN Amb. John Bolton, have so far held the line against the State
Department’s -- and, for that matter, the Israeli government’s -- interest in at
least exploring what Damascus may be prepared to offer.
Indeed, if Cheney’s column, entitled “The Truth About Syria”, reflects the
hawks’ view, it appears they are prepared to fight tooth and nail against any
attempt -- whether by Israel, Saudi Arabia, or even Washington’s European allies
-- to gain Syria’s cooperation on a range of Middle East issues, from
stabilising Iraq to reining in Hezbollah and Hamas.
“European governments should demonstrate that they value justice over profit and
impose financial and travel sanctions on Syria,” wrote Cheney who also called on
the administration to itself impose the full range of sanctions against
Damascus, a number of which Bush has so far ignored, that has been authorised by
Congress.
Despite the fact that UN investigators have yet to submit their final report,
Cheney all but accused Assad of responsibility not only for Hariri’s
assassination, but also for that of four other prominent Lebanese, including
Pierre Gemayel’s death last November.
Islamists Tear Down Crosses From Assyrian Churches, Tell Christians to
Convert or Die
4-14-2007
Assyrian International News Agency
Baghdad (AINA) -- An unidentified Islamic group has been threatening the
Chrisitan Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) in the Dora district
of Baghdad, a traditionally Assyrian area. The Islamic group issued an ultimatum
yesterday to Assyrian families, telling them to leave Christianity and convert
to Islam within 24 hours or they would all be killed. The Islamic group also
issued a fatwa (a religious edict) to confiscate the property of all Christians,
to force Assyrian women to veil themselves, to forbid genuflection (making the
sign of the Cross) and the wearing of the Cross.
Earlier the same Islamic group forcefully removed the Cross from the churches of
St. John and St. George. An affiliated Islamic group in Northern Iraq occupied
the Assyrian monastery of Raban Hormuz.
The persecution of the Assyrians in the Dora district has been relentless:
March 18, 2007: Muslims Force Assyrians in Dora to pay a 'Protection Tax'
November 8, 2004: Two bombs exploded outside two churches in southern Baghdad
quarters of Dora. Three people were dead and around 40 to 50 injured.
November 2, 2004 An unidentified group surprised and fired upon an Assyrian
family in Dora, Meekanik quarters, south of Baghdad. 'Alaa' Andrawis (b. 1965),
his wife Evelyn Malkizdaq, and their 10-years old son were shot at while in
their car.
October 21, 2004 Layla Elias Kakka Essa (aged 30s), a translator in the Assyrian
quarters of Dora, was shot and killed.
October 16, 2004 The St. Joseph church in Dora is hit with a bomb, along with
four other churches in Baghdad
June 11, 2004: Four masked men entered the Assyrian Christian district of Dora
in a civilian sedan and opened fire on the Assyrians, killing four and wounding
several others.
March 22, 2004: An Assyrian Elderly couple, Ameejon Barama and his wife Jewded,
were brutally murdered in their own home in Dora. The husband's throat was
slashed and the wife was struck repeatedly to the head.See also the following:
Violence Against Iraqi Assyrians Since the Liberation of Iraq
Muslims Forcing Christian Assyrians in Baghdad Neighborhood to Pay 'Protection
Tax'
Assyrian Testifies At the Congressional Human Rights Caucus
Iraq's Christians Live In Fear
Seven Assyrians Gunned Down In Baghdad
Iraqi Church Bombers: 'Christians Are Grandchildren of Monkeys and Swines'
Chaldean Seminary Rector Kidnapped in Iraq
Christians Live in Fear of Death Squads in Iraq
Iraq's Christians Flee As Extremist Threat Worsens
Iraqi Christians on Edge After Priest's Kidnapping
Fire Consumes Over 500 Assyrian Shops in Baghdad Suburb
Three Killed in Church Bombing in Baghdad
Iraqis Squeezed Out By Kurdish Expansion, Muslim-Centric Constitution
Continuing Attacks Against Assyrians in Iraq Renew Calls for a Safe Haven
Terrorist Attacks on Assyrians Intensify
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